![]() ![]() Now these two young Croatian guys are touring vast American arenas as the support act for Elton John and have landed a recording contract with Sony. It’s about the viral YouTube clip by 2Cellos playing AC/DC’s Thunderstruck: Vivaldi metamorphoses into AC/DC in front of a suitably shocked and bewigged 18th-century audience and - most importantly - it’s had over 22m views. It’s about Laura Mvula writing songs on her laptop during her lunch break, forwarding them to people in the business, getting signed by RCA and having her own late-night Prom. It’s about the Pet Shop Boys at the Proms. It’s about classical composers working with digital games. Now everything is about creativity and imagination – it’s about classical musicians working cross–genre with spoken word or dance. And it is so much easier to experiment and push at boundaries because they have already been broken down. Today’s young musicians are told exactly the same thing and especially they are told that it has never been harder to make it as a classical musician.īut this isn’t true – it is so much easier to make it today! Forty years ago there were none of the amazing opportunities that digital technology affords young musicians. Forty years ago I was told that it had never been harder to make it in the music business. Since I recorded Variations everything has changed - yet nothing has changed. ![]() But more likely it was because I never left my classical roots behind because - much as I liked to experiment - I knew that my bedrock as a solo cellist would always be based on that five-hundred-year treasure trove called classical music. Perhaps because we had shown that pushing at boundaries need not be a bad thing. Perhaps because audiences were actually crying out for melody, rhythm and harmony. Variations (aka the South Bank Show theme) was unexpectedly successful. But I believed in the piece so I took the chance.Īnd it didn’t ruin my career. That was the time when melody, rhythm and harmony were taboo in contemporary classical music and I was warned by friends and colleagues alike that I would literally ruin my career by recording it. The trouble was that he decided it should be a piece for cello and rock band - and the classical music world was a lot stuffier then than it is now. This meant that he finally had to write me the cello piece he had been promising for years. This is a valuable addition to the cello-and-piano literature (many of these pieces would be ideal singly or in small groups for student recitals), and taken as a whole it's a luxuriant hour of melody.In 1977 I won a bet with my brother Andrew. What it all adds up to is the elusive feeling that you're not listening to transcriptions at all. The engineering, at the acoustically very fine Wyastone Leys estate in England's Monmouthshire region, is unimpeachable. The presence of pianist John Lenehan, an Ireland specialist, contributes to the whole effect, as does the inclusion of Webber's wife, cellist Jiaxin Cheng, on a couple of tracks. Webber did most of the arrangements himself, and they're nicely calibrated to the wondrous sounds of his 1690 Stravidarius. The collection of 21 songs by Delius and the closely related (at least in the song realm) John Ireland includes some unknown melodic gems, such as the early "Birds in the High Hall Garden" of Delius, which inspired the whole project on Webber's part. This release by British cellist Julian Lloyd Webber, however, shows every sign of being a labor of love, and it's an exception to the rule. Instrumental arrangements of art songs often seem to strike at the balance of music and text that's at the heart of any good song, and are generally best enjoyed in small doses. ![]()
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